Michael Silence: Orange hoops and red-light cameras

The unique combination of a popular ex-basketball coach hanging around and a popular new one on board is producing a first-ever online phenomenon:

It's August and University of Tennessee football is not king.

Heresy, you say?

Well, the proof is in the pixels, sort of.

Of course, UT football is still king, but the exit of Bruce Pearl and the arrival of Counzo Martin to a program that has made the NCAA Tournament five years in a row is producing a first-of-its kind online synergy for UT sports.

So why isn't this column on the sports pages?

Well, because online links and commentary are melding sports news with daily news. The subjects are no longer defined by newspaper sections, even though those sections continue to set the table for online punditry.

And it's not unusual to see a "sports story" on page one of the News Sentinel.

Plus, I'm a sports fan.

If you do a search on Google of "Bruce Pearl" over the last month, you get about 200,000 hits.

If you do a search of "Cuonzo Martin" for that same time period, you get about 33,000 hits.

Plug in "Derek Dooley" and you get 180,000 hits.

Pearl and Martin combine for 28 percent more hits during a time the Vol Nation is in the throes of its annual mania.

Now, I realize that's no precise measurement of a topic, but it does give a flavor of the attention given the respective coaches.

And I realize Pearl is a mass marketer on a national level, and Dooley is not, yet.

So I then went to do a Pearl/Dooley search on Google Blog Search.

Pearl in the last 30 days had a 59 percent higher number of hits than Dooley — 3,790 compared to 2,390.

No doubt, the Internet has for a number of years been significantly changing the way people get news and information. So much so, you can get a pizza delivered at the swipe of a screen.

But still, the suggestion of Tennessee basketball rivaling football in any August is almost enough to get you laughed out of Neyland Stadium.

Or should that be Thompson-Boling Arena?

REVENUE CAMERAS:

I really need to find something new to rant about. But, heh, how can you go wrong ranting about government taking your money?

The latest example that floated around the Internet come to us from Oak Ridge.

Colleague Bob Fowler reports: "City officials announced (last) week they'll no longer use traffic safety camera evidence to fine motorists for not completely stopping before turning right on red.

"The cameras, however, still will be used to document motorists running the red lights and speeding.

"It's a cost-benefit issue where the cost of putting up signs outweighs the number of violators nabbed by the cameras, city officials said in a statement."